This is not an online puzzle, but one that is sent via mail or e-mail. You can win part or all of the $1,000 cash prize by submitting the top answers.

There are 50 questions requiring one or more words as the answers. Some of the questions will relate to each other and to a target word. You will have to identify people, places and things as described, but it all involves straight wordplay.

Target Word: Prune (note that the target word is something you must figure out)

Example 1: After deleting its last letter, what ten letter word rearranges to two fruits that being with the same letter?

ANSWER: UNPREPARED (prune, pear)

Example 2: What fictional character begins with a four letter body part and ends with a four letter body part? If you replace the character's third letter with the letter that follows it alphabetically, the character's name would begin with (after rearranging) the target word.

ANSWER: RUMPELSTILTSKIN (rump, skin, prune)

The contest costs $20 US to enter. Registration must be received by December 30, 2006, to Alan Levine, Puzzleup, 25 Shelley Drive, New York, USA. Alan can also be reached at puzzleup@hotmail.com, if you want to e-mail him with your registration intentions (and to let him know where he will need to send prize money!)

<edit> this contest is open to participants outside the US.

Just so that you are aware, I am in no way affiliated with this contest, other than as a contestant. I participated last year, when the prize was increased to $10K - the writer had done some advertising which he believed would generate more interest...but it did not relative to the prize money offered. I told him after last year's contest that I would make mention of the next contest in a few places to increase awareness in the puzzling community. I did manage to submit one of the 24 perfect scores in last year's contest.

If you have further questions, please let me know via PM or in this thread. Also, if you are interested, I can forward you the previous year's contest for your review.